Fall is here and it has brought with it pumpkin beer! Eye-popping foliage! Talking decorations at the drug store! Fall has also supplied the bountiful harvest of these talented writers. So don your tastefully sexy Halloween costume and come on down to The Book Cellar this Monday night at 7pm for a great night of stories in support of 826CHI:
M. Molly Backes is the author of the young adult novel The Princesses of Iowa (Candlewick Press, May 2012). She has taught students of all ages, and once got 150 of her middle-school students to write novels for National Novel Writing Month. Molly has lived in Wisconsin, Iowa, Massachusetts, and New Mexico, and now lives in Rogers Park with her greyhound Zia. She’s not the kind of person to play favorites or anything, but she might just like Iowa the best.
Once upon a time a writer of bank training materials, James Finn Garner sought release on the Chicago comedy stage. From performing came his first book, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, which became an international best-seller, published in Farsi, Madarin and Hebrew, among others. Since then, he has been the author of a half-dozen more books, a columnist at Chicago Magazine, and a commentator on National Public Radio. With his latest novel he establishes a new mystery genre, clown noir, with the award-winning Honk Honk, My Darling: A Rex Koko, Private Clown Mystery.
Since moving to Chicago six years ago for a job and an intense craving for Ann Sather cinnamon rolls, Mary Lorenz has performed improv, sketch and storytelling all over the Chicago area. An ensemble cast member at Laugh Out Loud Theater in Schaumburg and artistic associate at Chemically Imbalanced Theater in Chicago, Mary has recently performed with StoryLab, Tuesday Funk, That’s All She Wrote, the Kates, Story Club and Loose Chicks. You can find her at You’re Being Ridiculous in November or at Cesar’s, the home of the killer margaritas, on any day of the week.
Jane deLaubenfels is an actor and storyteller. She has worked with 2nd Story, Story Club South Side and recently performed in The Kindness of Strangers: A Festival of Storytelling at the side project. She lives with her husband and two children in Lincoln Square (a few blocks west of here).
Chris Bower is a playwright and the host of the semi-once-in-a-while Ray’s Tap Reading Series, which returns November 9th at the Prop Theater for a show called The Ray’s Tap Reading Series Has Allergies. You can find him at holdmyhorses.com
Essay Fiesta 